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It is a place to dine well and converse quietly. It is where a four-course meal with deliciously obscure wines can cost $50 a person, all in. It is the restaurant that chef Guy Rawlings and his wife, Kim Montgomery, finally opened in August after years of dreaming.

And it is the kind of from-scratch restaurant that bakes its own slashed sourdough boules ($2) and churns its own butter. Believe me, paying $4 for the tangy cultured kind is worth it against the regular (free) option.

Give us the funk

Vintage teak furniture and a tribal rug create a dining room unlike any other in Toronto. (J.P. MOCZULSKI)

Past Montgomery’s open kitchen lies the windowless white dining room with its mid-century furniture — 50 seats means some tables are communal — and wall-mounted Moroccan rug. You could be in an anthropology professor’s apartment circa 1964.

Yet this is very much Rawlings’ space. A creative chef and seasoned restaurant manager, Montgomery’s is the distillation of his experience and vision. He uses seasonal ingredients like Ontario pawpaws and obscure proteins like salmon necks. The mood is calm, with servers who can read a table.

And Rawlings, 35, is crazy about fermenting, making vinegars and pickles of varying funkiness.

Fermented grapes and grains also come into play, such as Italy’s LoverBeer craft sour beer. Rawlings says the $35 half-bottles pair excellently with his pork sausage and romano beans ($14), a judiciously seasoned trip to the Italian countryside. (No need to reach for the vintage salt-and-pepper shakers.)

Sparkling red Lambrusco and flinty Pyrénées whites by the glass (both $11) are more moderate indulgences.

“I could’ve opened this place with others, had a bigger budget and less stress. But I wanted control. I wanted an interesting, special list (priced) under the standard three-times markup,” Rawlings says.

Dishes are for sharing. Each is simple and precise, with a quirky kind of logic.

Cretons of Christmas-spiced goose ($12) are as rich as the Klondike gold rush while a $4 plate of “sour vegetables” brings a mild tricolore of beets, cabbage and green beans, each tasting of itself. Even more delicate? Clear-as-glass broth with cooked lettuce ($3.50), a surprisingly robust starter.

Desserts are more conventional. Financiers ($5) are buttery, crumbly pecan cookies. Tarte tatin ($12) follows the recipe of top French chef Alain Passard, in which thin apple slices are rolled in rosettes.

Rawlings makes his own goat cheese, caramelizing the leftover whey to garnish vegetables ($10). That idea, he acknowledges, comes from “the cool-kid restaurants in Europe.” But the cheese itself ($4) is pure Montgomery’s. Served with jammy plums, it comes with a locavore twist: syrup made from stevia grown on Montgomery’s roof garden offset with “halfway-to-vinegar” Concord grape juice harvested in a friend’s backyard.

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